5 Last Minute $15 Gifts for Your Permaculture Techno-Geek

I am a permaculture techno-geek learning junkie. If you’re out of gift ideas, or better yet, time, what better than an online training class in something fun and totally friggin’ useful?

From December 15th through the 18th, Udemy is offering some of their top rated online, self-paced classes for just FIFTEEN BUCKS. These are classes that normally sell for up to $200, but they’re on sale for the holidays. Plus you can order now and have it delivered on any date, and still… FIFTEEN BUCKS. And most of the Udemy classes have lifetime access, so if they can’t start the class for a while it really doesn’t matter. Some of these I haven’t taken but they’re on my wish list. So if you’d like to buy me a gift……

If one of these below doesn’t interest you, click through and search their library of 17,000 classes on every kind of topic.

I took this class with my uncle and it was really perfect, starting at total beginners, up through some moderate level of experience with Arduino. Why is Arduino important for a permaculture geek? It’s a super cheap, infinitely customizable platform for home automation, security, managing your aquaponics setup, monitoring temperature and humidity, etc, etc, etc.

The Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. Sensing the environment by receiving inputs from many sensors, Arduino affects its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and a number of other accessories. It’s intended for anyone making interactive hardware projects.

This course is designed to introduce the Arduino hardware and programming environment to get you started on building projects as soon as possible.

Are backyard chickens for you? Are you ready to take the plunge and become chicken owners? After watching several training classes and hanging out with some friends with chickens, we decided to wait a year (or forever).

It seems that everywhere you go, people are raising chickens. Mostly for their eggs, but some backyard farmers are even raising their own chickens for meat. As the world goes through a variety of changes, and food is becoming an issue, maybe we will go back to the old ways and everyone will have chickens.

Each hen provides 12 to 20 DOZEN eggs a year, for at least 3 years.

So in this course, we’re going to take a behind-the-scenes look at real chickens and having a real life with chickens. You’ll meet my flock, and we’re going to air all their dirty laundry.

Because once you’ve built your Arduino device (aquaponics manager, smart home system, short wave radio morse code interface, etc), then you’ll want to connect it to the internet. Or imagine building a simple system of moisture sensors placed strategically throughout your yard that tell you which part dries out first after a heavy rain, or how well your drip irrigation system is working. Now connect it to the internet and store months or years of data as your soil improves from all your permaculture projects…

What do the Apple Watch, Nest thermostat, Amazon Echo, and the Pebble smartwatch have in common? They’re all “things” in the Internet of Things, a worldwide network of soon-to-be- 40 Billion devices communicating with each other, the cloud and our phones.

This course will lead you through the design, development and prototyping of a representative “Thing” and show you how to prepare to launch a crowd funding campaign to finance production.

This course is about the health and vitality of our gardens and of ourselves. The old adage “you are what you eat” is never more evident than it is today. Everything we grow and consume starts with the soil our plants are grown on. It doesn’t matter if you’re vegan, vegetarian or eat meat – it all starts with soil. This class will show you how to build your garden and landscape soils without the use of synthetic fertilizers. You will learn the reasons and benefits of compost and cover crops, and about feeding the soil to grow stronger, healthier vegetables, fruit and landscapes. Separated into 10 lectures, we’ll take the process step by step making it easy for you to follow and transform your garden from one of chemical dependence to one where nature handles much of the work for you.

The course is structured as a series of PowerPoint and video lectures and finishes with a short quiz to reinforce your knowledge and confidence.

You should take this course if you’re interested in attracting pollinators to your vegetables and trees. You should take this course if you want to have a better understanding of how to become an organic gardener or landscaper. You should take this course if you want to become a better steward of your land, water and air.

THIS is a full on-site, hands-on intensive, showing how YOU can take control of your own environment and food supply, simply by growing the highest quality food- best flavor, highest nutritional content, shortest time, minimal blights & infestations…using sensible, ancient wisdoms & the materials you have around you.

This is about sensible, easy, natural farming. and why should growing food ever be different?

This course is for action-fun people, who are wired for Personal Power- to run their own show, their own simple life, with good sense front & center. This is Ladakhi Organic Farming utilizing BioDynamics (BD), or the cosmic dance which infuses, flows throughout Life on our mother planet. What does that mean…….you simply-

Know how the BD rhythms and calendar guide us into the highest-probability, best-results days for doing everything related to our beautiful farm- or tomatoes in the window box- throughout every season.